The present invention relates generally to building management systems. The present invention relates more particularly to a building management system which uses thermodynamic models for HVAC equipment.
A building management system (BMS) is, in general, a system of devices configured to control, monitor, and manage equipment in or around a building or building area. A BMS can include a heating, ventilation, or air conditioning (HVAC) system, a security system, a lighting system, a fire alerting system, another system that is capable of managing building functions or devices, or any combination thereof.
Typical BMSs use point-based models to represent data captured and stored by the BMS. Point-based models represent a facility as a collection of points and often require considerable commissioning time to properly define and configure each of the points. Some point-based models use look-up tables to store definitions for the data points and often lack sufficient definition to provide meaning to the data points. The architecture of conventional point-based models typically provides minimal extractable information upon which advanced control strategies can be based. Additionally, some point-based models require closed control loops to function properly and have a high capital cost with minimal scalability. It would be desirable to provide a BMS with a different type of data model to overcome these and other drawbacks of conventional point-based models.